On 22 and 23 November the International Joris Ivens Symposium in Hanoi brought together a wonderful mix of Vietnamese film veterans, who had collaborated with Joris Ivens and his wife in the 1960s and a group of film scholars from Canada, USA, Indonesia, Australia, France, China and The Netherlands.

The magnificient book of film historian Günter Jordan about Joris Ivens' East-German films, entitled 'Unknown Ivens' ('Unbekannter Ivens') will be presented on 25 November at the legendary UT Connewitz film theater in Leipzig. Next to the lecture by Jordan 'Joris Ivens at DEFA and in the GDR' the films Die Windrose (1958, The Rose Compass) and Rain (1929, Regen) will be shown.

In 2011-12 the Chinese Australian artist Shen Jiawei painted a large canvas Spain 1937 (220x300). It depicts a group portrait of eminent intellectuals and artists who participated in the Spanish Civil War, including Joris Ivens, George Orwell, Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Neruda and André Malraux.

On 16 November at IDFA Amsterdam the documentary Marceline. A Woman. A Century made by German director Cordelia Dvorak will be premiered. This portrait of the strong-minded filmmaker Marceline Loridan-Ivens (1928-2018) and fourth wife of Joris Ivens, saw its final editing two days before she passed away. In this film we see Marceline serving her guests coffee or vodka in her Paris apartment at the rue des Saints Peres.

Every year IDFA's Guest of Honor compiles their Top 10 favorite films that inspired them. This year Czech filmmaker Helena Třeštíková will present her Top 10 in a public Filmmaker Talk. The films will also be screened during IDFA 2018. She selected among others Joris Ivens' La Seine a rencontré Paris (1957). Třeštíková explains why these films are important to her in this article.

At the occasion of the 120th birthday of Joris Ivens and the 50th anniversary of the debut of the film The 17th Parallel, The People’s War (Joris Ivens and Marceline Loridan-Ivens, 1968) the VietNam Film Institute in collaboration with the European Foundation Joris Ivens are organizing an international Ivens-seminar in Hanoi on 22-24 November. Renowned (film) scholars from Vietnam, Canada, USA, Australia, Indonesia, China and The Netherlands will provide an impulse to the Ivens Studies around the world. Former Vietnamese co ...

On 18 September Marceline Loridan-Ivens (19 March 1928, Epinal) passed away in Paris. She was born in a family originating from Lodz (Poland), which emigrated to France due to anti-semitism. During her working career she was pollster, filmmaker, producer and writer. She was the fourth and last wife of Joris Ivens, whom she first met in 1963. The couple married officially in 1977. Her life was marked by wars.

On Monday May 28th the VietNam Film Institute presented a new documentary film about Ivens in VietNam at the occassion of a ceremony in Nijmegen celebrating 50 years of solidarity between Nijmegen and VietNam. Mrs. Ngo Thi Hoa, Ambassador of VietNam in The Hague, Mr. Hubert Bruls, mayor of Nijmegen, and activists from the 1960s and 70s supporting VietNam, attended this meeting. The theme 'Looking back for a better future' was illustrated with specialists presenting innovative technologies from Nijmegen in nowadays projects in Viet ...

The DEFA Foundation in Berlin released a new German DVD with Ivens-films in conjunction with the book Günter Jordan published about these films. DEFA already had launched a DVD with Song of the Rivers in and now presents The Wind Rose, Friendship Will Win and The Peace Cycle Tour Warsaw-Berlin-Prague 1952.

The long awaited book (in German) about Ivens and his East-German films, written by thé specialist in this field, Günter Jordan, has been published by the DEFA Foundation. This beautiful book describes in 680 pages the triumph in the 1950’s, the condemnation at the end of the 1960’s when Ivens became persona non grata in the GDR, until the resurrection of Ivens’ DEFA-films.

Chiara Bonfiglioli recently published her splendid book chapter about the DEFA filmproduction Die Windrose (1957, The Compass Rose) of which Joris Ivens was supervisor. ‘Die Windrose is a significant example of cross-border cooperation and provides important insights on the internationalists networks that developed after 1945 between Western-Europe, the Soviet Union and the Third World.’

Award winning Canadian documentary filmmaker Peter Davis presented his documentary Digging the Spanish Earth. Thanks to his interviews with Joris Ivens, Martha Gellhorn, Helen van Dongen and George Seldes, this film is of historical importance itself. Peter Davis also revisited locations in Madrid and Fuentedueña de Tajo where The Spanish Earth was shot in spring 1937.

Since six years Tian Wang (1976, Tongxiang 桐乡), is doing research for a dissertation about Joris Ivens and Modern China between 1938 and 1988. It was Régis Debray who advised her to study Ivens’ films in the framework of the theories of French historian Marc Ferro ‘Le film, l’agent et produit de l’Histoire’. For Tian Wang it is essential not only to study paper documents, but especially to meet and speak the people involved, both in China and the West.

Prof. Ariel Heryanto from Monash University in Melbourne lectured about Joris Ivens and Indonesia Calling in Djakarta. In his vivid presentation in Bahasa Indonesia (also a version with English subtitles is available) he discussed the tensed relationships between Indonesia, Australia and The Netherlands both back then and now. The opening sequence of Ivens' film showing an Australian society with diversity could be a model for their relationships. Since 22 October, when this film made by Jakarticus, was put on-line then thous ...

With the bulky book 'Saviour of the Tenth Muse. Jan de Vaal and the Netherlands Filmmuseum, 1946-1987' the European Foundation Joris Ivens is presenting the treasures of the national film archive of the Netherlands, as collected, presented and preserved by Jan de Vaal (1922-2001). Until now only sporadically has been published about the pioneering activities by its first director. He started in 1946 without anything, no film, no money, no housing, nog experience and no personnel. After 40 years he left the film museum with 15 Million meters of film, 300.000 photo's, 35.000 film posters, 10.000 film books, 220.000 clippings and other documents and 1.100 cameras and other film objects. For The Netherlands his work ment the saving of an art, the saving of the Tenth Muse. The presentation of the book is on 2 September in EYE Filmmuseum Amsterdam.

Programme presentation
With much pleasure EYE and the European Foundation Joris Ivens presenting the book ‘Redder van de tiende muze. Jan de Vaal en het Nederlands Filmmuseum 1946 – 1987’ on Friday 2 September 15.30 in EYE. EYE director Sandra den Hamer, senior curator Dutch films Rommy Albers and author André Stufkens will talk about the importance of Jan de Vaal for EYE, the Netherlands Filmmuseum and the film heritage. Shown are Blind kind (Johan van der Keuken, 1964) and Ah…Tamara (Pim de la Parra, 1965) as well as Il Museo dei Sogni (Luigi Comecini, 1950). Also rare footage of Jan de Vaal from the EYE Collection will be on show. .
‘Redder van de tiende muze. Jan de Vaal en het Nederlands Filmmuseum 1946 – 1987’:
ISBN: 9789086841394
384 pages with 1.250 illustrations in colour
Including a DVD of 2 hours from EYE and the Netherlands Institute for Vision and Sound
This edition has been made possible by the sponsorship of:
Europese Stichting Joris Ivens, Nederlands Filmfonds, Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds, VSB Fonds, EYE.

PREFACE
by José-Manuel Costa

‘A given collection is made up of a succession of terms, but the final term must always be the person of the collector.’ Jean Baudrillard[i]

Today, can we really understand the generation of Jan de Vaal, which is the pioneering generation of FIAF? And is it important to understand this generation and grasp his work and achievements?
Working in a filmarchive myself and being involved in the FIAF-movement for decades, confronted with day to day battles coping with complex archival problems, I notice many filmarchivists seem to have lost the connexion with their own roots, suffering from the same neglicange, indifference and forgetfulness Jan experienced many decades during the creation of the Netherlands Filmmuseum. However it would be a big mistake, especially for an institution which takes care of (film) history themselves for now and for the future not to relate to their own history. It is like an adult neglecting his birth, his juvenile impulses and the wonder of childhood.

I have met Jan and Tineke de Vaal at my first FIAF Congress in Rapallo, 1981. The friendship with them started one year later, when during a month I stayed in Amsterdam to study the Ivens papers in the Netherlands Filmmuseum. I was able observing the daily routine of Jan at his desk and telephone, an image I kept and often came back to me: a part of a bigger, but also relatively closed, secretely tied world; a rather centralized but also immensely committed one.

So I got the opportunity witnessing a foreign archive Director and important FIAF executive. What I remember best is the way he did it, with a repeated, genuine and open push forward. With humour and optimism his obsessive message for me was to go ahead, to carry the group’s legacy and find my own way inside it.
Like as if he was saying ‘ it’s just great to find someone younger really interested in this; there’s a world to build and you have a role in it’. This, I cannot forget.

My first gratitude to Jan comes out of the fact that he always kept faithful to this ‘push forward’, always repeating it. But gradually, through the years, I noticed that this ‘push forward’ could only exist thanks to a ‘push backward’: I‘ve experienced that few other people insisted so much with me on the plain need to record past history. Even in our latest meeting he kept urging upon me the awareness of the lack of it, the urgency to accomplish it.

Whether his greed of absorbing new technology or preserving the past his commitment to push forward or backward derived from one impulse: independence. Independence from local or national authorities, especially the government, independence from various interest groups, like film producers and film theateroperators. Maybe his roots in the Netherlands-Indies and his experiences during the war made him especially sensitive for staying independent.

More than the archives alone, the overall context radically changed, and new interests surrounded the conservation and use of film heritage, amplifying its challenges. But then, whatever the differences and irreversibilities, isn’t it obvious that the founding groups were in fact, and always will be, some of the few sure and solid platforms and references from whcih we may be able to create something new?
And that their work and path are thus something we defenitely just need to turn into an object of serious history?

It is positive that worldwide interest in the roots of filmarchives is growing rapidly, when looking to the increasing stream of publications, conferences and studies. This book on the Dutch situation is in this way not only a tribute to Jan de Vaal, but moreover a tribute to the conscience of filmarchiving.